"It bugs a lot of people. Me too.â€Ted replied.
"But, I know that you and Bill sent two glass balls back in time when we were having lunch in Atlanta. I saw the two balls appear. Why didn't that event erase itself?"She asked.
"We've talked about this before.†Ted said.“The conditions were different. The shot into the past in Atlanta probably really didn't change anything. While I love you much and I'm happy that you joined the Project then, you probably would have joined anyway even if Bill and I hadn't used the Sandia facilities to send the marbles back almost six months later. That's what I think anyway. It's all like Alice in Wonderland."
Sally was listening to him, but only partially. She had heard the whole thing before, but she wanted to pull it out again in order to see how things could be even a little different. "So, what if we do something to the airplane that will get written up in such a way that we will see it and realize we did it."
"Arrrgh. It all makes my brain hurt." Ted replied. "If we are successful and stop the attack, then we don't have to stop the attack. So, we won't leave ourselves any clues. That's the way I understand it."
"Hmmm."Sally said. "It sounds like we don't need to stop the attack. Only to modify it, substantially modify it, in some way that we will recognize it as our work."
Ted's reply was to nod thoughtfully.
Ted only needed a few minutes to develop a plan to attack the commercial plane. The plane's tires were easy and vulnerable targets for the hot rocks. If glass spheres from the Project appeared in or on the tires, the tires would melt instantly. Low tire pressures would immediately ring alarms in the cockpit and multiple flat tires appearing a little after 8AM would result in grounding the aircraft for many hours.
They consulted with Bill, took the plan to Colonel Landry, and after doing his own double checks, Landry loaded the location and time data into a form in the physics application. The plan called for the placement oftwenty two blazing quartz balls into twelve targeted tires on the 767 jet. Because of the time needed to re-charge the capacitor bank between each laser shot, firing the entire spread would take over almost two days in real time. However, they would all be targeted to appear at the same time on the ramp at Logan Airport.
"Actually," Landry said. The plane might be grounded and history changed with the first shot. We might just as well plan for a thousand shots over two thousand days. When we have success, in that instant everything will shift and it will be like it never happened."
"Oh look," Sally said innocently, "A white rabbit with a watch and a waistcoat."
Colonel Landry smiled thinly. "I've lived with this conundrum every day for five years. I'm still not used to it"He turned away from his computer screen. "Okay, I've plugged everything into the physics software. It will have to chew through the four dimensional positioning and power formula for at least ten hours until we get the firing data. Some people on the physics side will be working all night to put together the beads and holders. I told the software to set the initial firing at 0730.1 don't want to wake up too many of our neighbors with the bang."
"Well," Ted said. "It will be a full day tomorrow. How about some dinner, Sal?"
THE DAY OF JIHAD
Tuesday, September 17, 2001
2130 Eastern
Sunrise Apartments, Homestead, FL
* * *
UNCLASSIFIED
"Hostility toward America is a religious duty, and we hope to be rewarded for it by God . . . . I am confident that Muslims will be able to end the legend of the so-called superpower that is America." Osama bin Laden quoted in Time Magazine
* * *
Mohammad Rajesh Mishra watched his friend Abu bin Fahd pace the room. Fahd was agitated. He spoke in rapid Arabic with a Saudi accent. At times Rajesh, whose Arabic was learned Afghanistan and went rusty in Brooklyn, couldn't keep up.
"This is the greatest time in the history of the world for Pan-Islam." Abu bin Fahd said. "We must strike in this great time and we can not allow these worshipers of Satan's science to take away the sacrifices of our holy martyrs."
"That is why I came to you, my friend. But, what can we do?" Rajesh asked. Rajesh stood in the middle of his apartment's living room while Fahd paced around him. Suddenly, Fahd stopped, turned, and put his arms on Rajesh's
shoulders. Fahd literally whispered into his ear as if to hide from hidden microphones.
"When Mohammad Atta, praised be his name, was here in Florida, I met with him several times. He gave me an Internet address, a Website hosted in Germany, where I could leave information for the intelligence unit of Al-Qaeda. We must find out what these Americans know, what they plan, what they can do. Then, we must tell Al-Qaeda. We must give them this weapon so that, praises to Allah, our brave fighters can wipe these American infidels from our Earth."
Fahd looked Rajesh in the eyes. His breath was sour and he stunk of sweat. "Which of these Americans knows the most? Which is the most vulnerable?"
"The whore and her man." Rajesh answered. He struggled with the Arabic phrases. "The Colonel and Dr. Wirtz are not vulnerable. They would die before telling us anything of value. But, the whore's man would tell us everything when we start to put her in her place. They have a child. We could use the child's pain to make this colonel and his whore tell us all."
Mohammad Rajesh Mishra was the son of an Afghan Mujahideen or "Freedom Fighter" as the CIA-inspired American press called them. His father fought against the Russians. The CIA had trained his father to fire the American Stinger missiles that were so effective against Soviet Helicopters in Afghanistan.
His father lost his left foot to a Soviet land mine in 1980. Rajesh was only a boy of twelve, but he nursed and hid his father for months while the Soviets searched for him. The CIA agents sent his father and him to New York in 1981 in order to keep his father from becoming a propaganda tool for the Soviets. Five years later in Brooklyn, his father died, an angry and bitter taxicab driver.
Rajesh worked his way through the school system in New York and earned a two-year degree in computer database management. He had a CIA-created identity as a Pakistani, a CIA-issued Green Card, and he earned his US citizenship when he turned 18. He had a perfect school and work record so he was able to get a federal government job in New York. He felt that the American Government owed him a job because of what they had done to his father. On the strength of steady performance on that first job, and through the power of the Civil Service System, he got a job with a mid-level security clearance at this Homestead Project.
At first, he had no idea what the Project did. There were large parts of the building he could not enter and his computer access was limited to updating programs, doing maintenance, and writing special applications such as database searches. But eventually, tiny pieces of ideas filtered through. Once, in a database search, he came across an unclassified document that had been prepared for a briefing with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It described, in general terms, some of the potential uses of time displacement. That document opened his eyes to possibilities.
While he was a practicing Muslim, he never considered himself radical. But, during 2000 he knew that there were things going on in the small Muslim community in South Florida. At the Mosque, he met Abu bin Fahd.They were the same age and neither one had a real social life. They were both simultaneously shocked and drawn to the nightlife of Miami.They felt corrupted by the filthy women they saw, but they lusted to throw themselves into the dirt.
On the morning of 9/1 1, Rajesh has just arrived on the base to go to work when the security alert siren sounded. He left the base and went home to watch television. Fahd, who was a part time student at Florida International University with no real employment, joined him. Together they toasted to the wonderful success of the Islamic martyrs and felt ashamed that they had no real part in the action of the wonderful day.
On the Saturday after the glorious attack, the Colonel had called everyone in to work. Rajesh was pretending to work on a
database update, but he was still too emotional to get anything done. When the woman, Sally Arthurs, come into the Project building, he saw her in the hallway. She seemed powerful and beautiful, but she had bare legs and bare shoulders. Her toe nails were painted and naked like a whore's. When he passed her in the hallway she smiled at him and met his eyes. He was immediately attracted to her, but then her husband gave him a hard look and he turned away.
That evening he had consulted with Abu bin Fahd. It was evident that the new Air Force officer was an expert who
would use the Homestead project to somehow stop the holy martyrs. Such a thing seemed impossible, but Rajesh convinced Fahd that these Americans and their time science were capable of anything.
The next day Rajesh followed the whore and her man and boy to their house next to the golf course. He had looked at houses like that when he first came to the town. They had large sliding glass doors in the back just like those on his apartment. Last month an apartment in his building had been robbed. The robbers had simply levered a sliding door out of its track and removed it to gain entry.
Rajesh and Fahd worked on a plan. A cousin of Fahd had a gun he had stolen from a store where he worked. They would enter the house through the sliding door, threaten the child with the gun, and get all of the information on the time project from the officer. Then, they would transmit the information to Al-Qaeda. Fahd assured Rajesh that there would be plenty of time to train the whore to serve him.
PROTECT AND DEFEND
Thursday, September 18, 2001
1800 Eastern
Homestead, FL
* * *
Excerpt from the Personal Narrative
of Brig Gen Fred Landry, PhD, (USAF Ret)
Recorded July 2006
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET/TA
"We didn't do anything special about security. We didn't conceive of a threat of any kind to the Project."
* * *
Excerpt from the Personal Narrative
of Major General Ted Arthurs
Recorded February 2008
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET/TA
". . . . .we were so focused on New York. What could happen in Homestead, Florida? The fact that the hijackers had trained at an airport about ten miles up the road from us in Kendall, Florida never entered our minds."
* * *
After they cleaned up their work space for the day, Ted and Sally gathered Patrick and joined Bill at a local restaurant in Homestead. "Cuban food?" Ted observed. "What do you recommend?"
Bill replied while still looking at the menu. "Simple food. Good stuff like fried pork chunks, roasted chicken, or Ropa Vieja. Of course with side dishes of plantains, black beans, and rice."
Sally said, "Pork for Patrick. He'll eat a ton of rice."Sally and Ted hadn't ever introduced Patrick to chicken fingers. Sally wasn't sure why kids were addicted to them, but she was sure it wasn't a good thing. Ted went for the Ropa Vieja and Sally said she'd try the Vaca Frita. "Fried cow. How nice."
It's marinated flank steak." Bill supplied. "I think fried cow has more dignity." Sally told him.
Still looking at the menu, Bill grunted. "Moros."He said. "It's the short term for black beans and white rice. But, the long name is Moros Y Cristianos. That means Moors and Christians. There is history there going back to seven hundred AD when the Arabs occupied Spain."
"This little argument has been going on for a very long time." Ted observed.
"Western Europeans and North Americans don't tend to remember much beyond the last news cycle. But this conflict goes well beyond last week."Bill said.
They spent some easy time drinking Sangria and talking about the things they'd done over the past five years. Bill was, as he said, "Between women." right now. Sally was pretty sure that meant that he had more than one on the
"Wait a minute." Sally said. "Whoever is waiting out there expects to see both of us. If you go back to the house alone they might not do anything. I'll leave Patrick here, but I'm going with you. Do you have another one of those?"She pointed at the automatic.
"Now you wait a minute." Julie said. "I'm not easy with all this firepower going out my door."
Sally put Patrick down on the floor and walked over to her husband. "We've both got permits to carry concealed in North Carolina that are recognized in Florida. My Beretta PX4 is locked in a small strong box at the house."She held her hand out for the gun and Ted handed it to her without a pause. Sally dropped the clip, jacked the slide, hit the slide release, removed the slide, removed the barrel, retained the spring, and handed the parts to Ted. He reversed the process and put the automatic into his waistband. In the few seconds it took Ted to reassemble the Smith, Woody had done his disappearing act again and reappeared with a Glock Model 26. "For a small gun, I like that 26 better than the PX4." he said as he handed it to Sally.
They spent about thirty seconds coming up with a plan. Jocko left silently though the back door. He was going to get his own vehicle and get into position at Ted and Sally's rental house. Woody would follow the guy who was following them. A few minutes later, Ted, Sally, and Bill waived a noisy goodbye at the door of the condo. Sally carried a pillow wrapped in a blanket to simulate a sleeping Patrick. On the way out the door they were introduced to two off duty Homestead officers who were coming to visit Julie in response to the phone call she just made. Patrick would have some pretty fierce babysitters.
"Bill," Ted said. "It will look suspicious if we don't go back and get our car. We'll trade cars at the restaurant. Will you go back and look after Patrick?You should also tell Colonel Landry."Bill was about to object, but he knew he didn't have any of the skills this kind of situation called for. "Also," Ted added, "you have to plan the beads. You know what, where, and when to shoot them."
"Yeah, it already occurred to me that the beads appeared in the restaurant just about a minute after the time that's on my credit card receipt. I guess I already know how to do what I must have done. Or will do. I guess."
"Oh God."Sally said. "Not that again."
Their laughter drained a little nervous tension.
After changing cars and saying goodbye to Bill, Ted and Sally drove back to their rental house following the posted speed limit. They turned on the lights and rummaged around for half an hour in the kitchen and living room before
moving to the bedrooms. Sally did some normal things in the bedroom and bathroom, went to a single reading light in the bedroom, and then went totally lights out. The difference was that while Sally made noise in the bathroom, Ted stood in the dark hallway watching the living room and the bedroom windows.
When they went lights out, they sat down back-to-back in the hallway. Now, each one was armed with two weapons: Their own that they retrieved from the small safe and the ones they got from Woody. They supported each other with their backs and rocked rhythmically and silently in the dark. After about an hour, Ted felt Sally freeze. She reached back and dug the nails of her left hand into his waist. He slowly turned halfway so he could see the bedroom windows and doors and the entry to the hallway from the living room where Sally was focused. With his left ear pointed down the hallway, he heard a crunching sound. Then, he felt and smelled the outside air and sounds as a sliding glass door off the pool area was forced open.
They had discussed the concept of letting intruders get well into the house before challenging them or opening fire.You could defend yourself in your home in Florida, but some left-leaning prosecutors wanted to hear that you had retreated and had your back to the wall before resulting to deadly force. Otherwise they might call it murder. Particularly if you were armed better than the local SWAT team.
Ted was turning and moving next to Sally. He was bringing his own Springfield Armory M191 I into line down the hallway when he heard two grunts and thuds. "Friendlies coming through. All clear. Safe 'em up.â€Ted and
Sally uncramped from their positions on the hallway floor and pointed their weapons at the ceiling. In the living room, Woody and Jocko were each sta
nding over an inert form on the tile floor. "These guys are not good." Woody said. "No talent. We were three steps behind them all the time and they didn't have a clue. I could have tapped this guy on the shoulder and given him a heart attack. But, still it was something real. One thing, they were speaking Arabic out there. One guy speaks it like a Saudi native. He was so nervous he wouldn't shut up. The other guy is something else. Not native. They kept talking about where they were going to take you. This was supposed to be a snatch."
Sally's face was white and her jaw was tight. "What did you do to them?" She asked.
"A sleeper hold. Illegal for law enforcement in most states, but effective. They'll only be out for a few minutes. Let's hog tie 'em Jocko."Jocko and Woody slipped plastic wire ties around the wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles of the inert bodies on the floor. Then Woody pulled out a mobile phone and made a quick call to Julie. "Here." he said handing he phone to Ted. "Wirtz wants to talk to you."
"Are you guys all right?" Bill asked through the phone.
"Oh yeah.â€Ted said. We didn't do a thing, but we've got two intruders here. Broke in through the sliding glass door. We need a next step. Oh, how's Patrick?Woody says this was supposed to be a kidnapping. Is he safe?" Sally looked at him intensely, waiting for Bill's reply.
Bill replied. "He entertained the Homestead police force for a while, but then he dropped off. He's snoozing on the couch between two cops who are watching Letterman. The Colonel is fit to be tied at being out of the action. He has the FBI standing by and calling every five minutes for an update. It sounds like Elliot Ness getting ready to bust Al Capone. I'd say wait for the FBI. They'll probably break down your doors as soon as he gives them the go-ahead."
After he hung up, Ted told Sally "He's good. He's got the cops surrounded."
A Glint In Time (History and Time) Page 13